Below Belief

On for a lazy day today. The pace of travelling seems to have caught up with us and we want nothing more than to mooch around town in the sun. Our main activity is chasing round travel agents, all of whom claim to know nothing about Rhodes. Perhaps we have come up against the Greek/Turkish divide, neither side acknowledging the other. In the end we resort to ringing up a Rhodes travel agent who tells us charter flights must be booked in person four days before when they know for sure how many places are left. This adds a whole new element of risk to our return flight. Flights are apparently on Wednesdays and Sundays and we imagine a scenario and the dilemma which could face us – take a guaranteed flight on Sunday or risk an extra three days in the sun for a late flight. Next Wednesday is the point of no return in terms of getting back for Uni. The trouble is the excitement of all this risk detracts from the relaxation we’re supposed to be enjoying here.
We visit Doy-Doys, a restaurant we have been recommended and whose title translates as ‘Stuffed Stuffed’. The title is very apt. We get two huge plates of superb food for not very much money and resolve to eat here again as many times as we can. Later in the carpet bazaar we are greeted by ‘Hello, How are you?’ by one of the many merchants as we are walking through. Chris replies with ‘No. No thank you. No carpets’. A rather crestfallen carpet salesman shrugs and claims indignantly ‘I didn’t even say anything.’
A Turkish Bath, us being experienced connoisseurs, is on the cards this evening. We are handed cotton wraps and directed into a marble room where three worried looking chaps are already lined up for ‘the treatment’. It seems this is a pro-active baths – none of your ponsey plunge pools or your saunas – here they actually get you clean. It feels like waiting outside the head masters office, not knowing what is going to happen to you, but knowing it’s going to hurt. A vaguely triadic Turk with an enormous bowl cut and even bigger fists soaps us down on a marble slab. My legs and arms are stretched and pulled in ways I’m sure they were not designed to, while I slip and slide around on the soapy block frequently losing my loin cloth. The next stage is no less enduring. We squat down while a large bellied Turk sloshes hot water all over us and then rubs us down with a mitten which seems to be covered in sand-paper. I lose at least a pound of flesh in the process, and wonder if this is the price I pay.
Afterwards, feeling cleaner than ever before, we sit around in towels and head dresses sipping Turkish tea with the three other guys who turn out to be Dutch, like some Nativity play re-enactment. The Turkish guy in the corner is chatting away on the phone and I’m sure he’s saying ‘You should see what I’ve got these guys doing this time. Really stitched them up tonight’. I wish I had my camera, but then think otherwise and am quite glad I don’t. Outside it is raining huge drops and we dash home ducking under awnings and dodging the puddles. A Turk rushes past us and shouts at us ‘Umbrella for sale!’. We laugh. This seems to sum up Istanbul completely. Just when we thought we’d escaped the English influence, and getting the beers in in the bar, we bump into Dan and Simon, economists from Emmanuel. Ridiculous, but they met out here too.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 31st, 1996 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.